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Though I’ve always considered myself a total geek, I have always been proud of the fact that I’ve never specialized in my geekery. I can tell you the basic rules of a few collectible card games, but you’ll likely kick my ass with your newfangled tournament deck and all of its starkly foil cards. I have at least 2 character sheets with scribbles and erasures folded up somewhere in a closet or a rulebook or a binder at home but I honestly had no idea what it meant when I rolled that 3 d-6, just that everyone seemed to enjoy it. I can tell you that Han made the Kessel run in under 12 parsecs, and that he seriously did fire first, or that Boba Fett wears Mandalorian armor, but I didn’t even realize until recently that there are people who actually speak wookie. Like, to each other. Out loud.

It’s that ability to cry ignorance when really tested on any of these things that validates people like me. We can pretend we will fit in with any crowd because we can tell you that the Enterprise’s registry number is ‘NCC-1701′ but can’t tell you what the hell that means. We can shrug our interest off as though it was just something we picked up in passing. A tidbit from the wash. Without this sacred ignorance, indeed the last bastion of standard normalcy, people like me become those people that get married in Klingon costumes. This very slippage is that which I wish to discuss with you just now.

You see, the ways of the geek are sly and attractive to those with the sickness. Those susceptible to the many facets of geekery, those such as myself, can often find themselves overstepping their established boundaries. I can’t explain it. I don’t know why it is so cool to play the Metalman stage over and over again. I don’t have any explanation as to why I need to have 3gb of RAM, heat-sinks on said RAM and blue superbright LEDs trained on each individual goddamned stick. If you are one of us you need it. Maybe not the RAM, maybe your poison is the entire Knight Rider collection on audio tape, the point is, though, that you’ve got the sickness.

The following is as much a cry for help as an admission. Please see it not as the symptom of a terrible disease that is overtaking me, but as a warning sign that just this sort of disease is defiantly on the way. If you’ve no interest in me in the least, read on anyhow. There may be someone in your life who needs you right now; needs your care and support in this the most distressful of times. If you know someone who has made an admission similar to that which follows, know that you are not alone. You must also know, however, that you don’t have much time. I will provide a solution after the admission itself, hopefully it will provide the needed aid to you and your ailing friends/family.

The admission follows:

The USS Enterprise (commissioned in 2245) is a Constitution class starship. Its primary mission objective emphasized extensive galactic exploration. Because of this the Enterprise has 14 science labs, 8 more than a standard Federation starship. Its length is 289 meters, its beam 132 and its draft 73. It weighs 190k metric tons, crews 430 (43 officers, 387 enlisted) and can make warp 8 (Cochrane scale). It is armed with 6 phaser emitters, and a similar 6 photon torpedo tubes. It uses standard deflector shields for defense and is of the ‘Heavy Cruiser’ fleet type. Oh, and ‘NCC-1701′ doesn’t mean anything. Gene Roddenberry had seen the prefix ‘NC’ on airplanes and thought adding a ‘C’ would ‘update’ their look. Matt Jefferies, the director of the original pilot episode of Star Trek said ’1701′ was easy to distinguish on the miniature from a distance. Otherwise it is completely arbitrary.

You see that? I know that shit. If you ask me, I can tell it to you like it is some thing totally normal for me to know. Like if you asked me who the current president is or what Sloth’s favorite ice cream is. I don’t want to know that shit. It’s like that Cyclops from Krull said, some things a man is better off just not fucking knowing – and Star Trek trivia is probably analogous to black tar heroine for those who are party to its influence.

I’ve got it bad, too. I bought season 2 of Star Trek: The Original Series for myself on man-on-cross day, as I’d already torn through the first season which I’d picked up as sort of a cute throw-back to watching reruns as a kid. I got to the end of the last season disc, the one just before the special features disc – that would be disc 6 for those of you who don’t realize how totally pathetic this is – and I was immediately depressed. Like, ‘needed a bit of time to myself’ depressed. I didn’t get it at the time, though. It didn’t hit me that there was something wrong until I found myself turning to the special features for some sort of macabre fix. The impact came from how completely exuberated I was to find that there were 2 more episodes on the final disc with the special features. I was stunned in my excitement. I immediately deduced that there must be 2 more from season 1 on the bonus disc for that set as well. I almost pissed myself I was so excited.

The excitement lasted for about 15 minutes, after which I realized exactly what I was getting so excited about. The depression that followed I liken to that alcoholics must feel when they find out that with that one taste they nabbed after cleaning up came the utter destruction of their lives. It was seriously like my own little embarrassing internal AA meeting where the drunks were replaced with Romulans, Klingons, Vulcans and Leonard fucking McCoy. Shirtless Sulu, the one with the fencing foil, was laughing at me. Bizaro Spock had surmised that my interest was most illogical and Kirk was in the corner necking with some blue chick.

There has to be an end to this. I am not actually interested in how Khan knew who Chekov was in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Himself when Chekov wasn’t even on the show until season 2 and Space Seed, the episode with Khan, was in season 1 (incidentally, it was because Chekov was not yet a bridge officer that we had never seen him. He was on the Enterprise all along. He knew Khan because he once heldup the bathroom, making Khan wait to pee. I’m not making this shit up. God I wish I was). This is just one of those things that people like me find themselves wrapped up in.

I guess my issue with it is more that it is Star Trek. I don’t want to be a Trekkie, Trekker, Trek-Head, Loser, whatever you call them. I was content with the fact that I knew only enough to make a few pop culture references and am, frankly, sickened with myself now that I can point out blatant contradictions between the shows and the movies and the sequels and the new series’ and I feel terrible about myself because of it.

The solution, friends, is simple. You may need a pen and paper for this, as if you are already going through Trek withdrawal because of the time spent reading this far you may not understand what I am about to reveal to you. It has been passed down from generation to generation. Since the dawn of man we have held the answer to just this sort of terrible bastardization of interests. Listen closely, because I am about to let you in on one of nature’s best kept secrets:

Sex. This is theory, but I am certain there is likely something to this.
Look, I know you are probably shocked right now. Get a bit of a grip and think about it. Sex and Star Trek are opposite poles. One begets the exclusion of the other. I had no idea the black hole that is Trekkerdom.

Girls: If your guy is falling, get him up. If you think he’s too far gone, just tell him you are in the Pon Farr and you will die unless he lays you out. Tell him your T’Pring needs a serious dose of his Stonn. A gong might help. A gong and a tambourine. Don’t keep this up, however, or you’ll have ferengies at your wedding reception. Just get him the hell away from the TV, bang his eyeballs out and be proud that you made a man out of him again. It is like a hard reboot. He’s got to flush his RAM. Show him what Terran Occupancy really means.

Guys: Stop. Seriously, it is not cool. If you have that great girlfriend who will pretend to be even slightly interested in your comparison of federation life to our current state of democracy, or your explanation of how a warp nacelle works, you are lucky but skating on thin ice. Every minute you spend exalting Kirk’s drama she is fighting a losing battle with her biological need to be with someone who won’t make a total mess of her life. When she gets desperate, mentions Pon Farr and hops on – this is her way of letting you know you’ve got a chance. A single chance. Your only response is to be the loving, caring and terribly interesting guy she came to love. She likes you exactly because you can get caught up in things. She thinks you are going to get caught up in her. Give it a try, man, you will find that – no matter your opinion of Yeoman Smith – your girl, the one who could ride out your misdirected obsession, is the most interesting thing on this planet. That or she’ll dump you outright, in which case they totally just released season 3 and Best Buy has it for $99.

Lemme’ borrow it when you’re done.